Slot machines are among the most popular games in online casinos around the world. Providing a relaxing form of entertainment as well as the potential for big wins, slots are likely to remain popular for many years to come.
This article about how slot machines work is part of a bigger series of articles about how online casinos work. In this series of articles, we aim to use our experience and knowledge to provide useful insights into how the different aspects of an online casino work.
In this casino guide, we will focus on the slot machine, and the goal is to let you get a deeper understanding of how payouts are determined and what’s the difference between classic slots, video slots and jackpot slots.
More specifically, we will discuss topics such as RNG and RTP before we move on to comparing the different types of slot machines.
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RANDOM NUMBERS GENERATOR (RNG)
What an online casino player see and what is really happening with a slot machine is two very different things. On the surface, it might look like you press a button to spin the slot machine, randomly giving you a pattern of symbols.
However, behind the scene, the story is a bit different. To determine the outcome of any spin in a slot machine, the provider uses a Random Numbers Generator (RNG). This is a software algorithm set to select numbers within a range.
This is the core difference between how a slot machine works and how a live casino game works.
Each number represents an outcome. This outcome can result in you losing money or winning money. If you play at a licensed online casino on a game produced by a licensed game provider, you have a 100% guarantee that this algorithm is fair.
So, when you click the ‘spin’ button next time, you know that what really happens is that you pick a random number, and what is in front of you is a replay of the game round that number represent.
PAYOUTS AND ODDS OF WINNING
When we discuss payouts and odds of winning in slot machines, we often refer to RTP which is short for Theoretical Return To Player. Although working together with RNG, these two abbreviations must not be confused with each other.
While RNG, as we thought earlier, is about picking winning numbers, the RTP is a percentage of the total money turned over, that should be paid back to players over a minimum of 1 billion spins.
To control this, the software providers connect different multipliers to each number in the random number generator. The sum of these prizes accumulates to a certain percentage.
If you want to learn more about this subject, you are welcome to read our guide on RTP, game margin and house edge.
HOW CLASSIC SLOTS WORK
A video slot shares many of the same features as a classic slot but as the name indicates, it contains some extras to it. At one point, game providers learned that a slot machine didn’t have to resemble the ones found in the land-based casinos, in order for it to be entertaining.
You could design different symbols, add more wheels, create animations and so on, as long as the RNG engine was installed, and still be left with a slot machine. The game providers did so, and the video slot is by far the most popular category of slots now in modern time.
By adding the number of wheels, the producers allowed themselves some room to be creative with special features, ways of winning, design and more importantly, bonus rounds.
HOW VIDEO SLOTS WORK
A video slot shares many of the same features as a classic slot but as the name indicates, it contains some extras to it. At one point, game providers learned that a slot machine didn’t have to resemble the ones found in the land-based casinos, in order for it to be entertaining.
You could design different symbols, add more wheels, create animations and so on, as long as the RNG engine was installed, and still be left with a slot machine. The game providers did so, and the video slot is by far the most popular category of slots now in modern time.
By adding the number of wheels, the producers allowed themselves some room to be creative with special features, ways of winning, design and more importantly, bonus rounds.
HOW JACKPOT SLOTS WORK
Some experts argue that jackpot slots don’t deserve their own category. This is because comparing a jackpot slot to any other slot is like comparing two different potatoes.
A jackpot is rather a mechanic you can add to either classic slots or video slots. LeoVegas has made this blatantly obvious by creating the LeoJackpot that you can win on literally any popular slot machine in their online casino.
On a jackpot slot, a small part of your stake will be taken and put into a prize pool (the jackpot). If you hit a normal win, what is left will be multiplied for a win. The small part of your stake, however, will not, as that is already part of the jackpot.
By doing this you contribute to growing the jackpot, until someone, maybe even you, hit the winning number of the random numbers generator and wins the jackpot.
